The Moon is Not a Dream
by Reading Redhead
Summary: Nita and Kit seem to always be on the moon nowadays, but what whas their first visit like? Takes place right after So You Want to Be a Wizard.


Disclaimer: None of this is mine (except for the products of my imagination which I make use of freely). It's all Diane Duane's, (except for the Moon, which is humanity's). This is probably a good thing, because I couldn't write it half as well or in twice as much time.

A/N: Fixed up a few small typos that were bugging me.

The Moon is Not a Dream

Nita pushed her hair out of her face and knocked on the door of the comfortable looking two-story house. A little behind her and to one side stood her friend and partner, Kit, busy keeping the giant white sheepdog that had greeted them from knocking him down. "Sit, Annie!" he said to the dog, with no effect. Sighing, he patted her head with his hand and began to scratch behind her ears.

"Coming!" called a voice from inside the house, and a moment later a tall man with dark hair opened the door. When he saw Kit and Nita on the doorstep, Tom Swale's usual grin widened a bit, though his eyes dimmed at what he was undoubtedly seeing on their faces.

It had been a little less than a day since Nita and Kit had completed their Ordeal—the test that every wizard must pass to become a full practitioner of the Art. It had not been easy but, as Nita reflected, facing the Power that created entropy, and its corollary, death, never was. _I didn't think it would be this hard, though,_ she thought, remembering sadly all those she had lost already because of her wizardry. _I didn't think it would hurt this much._

Nita was bumped out of her thoughts by a gentle nudge from Kit. She looked and saw that Tom had walked into the house, and had obviously invited them in. She followed Kit in, closed the door, and was about to follow Tom into the living room when an unexpected voice intruded upon her thoughts.

_I wasn't expecting it, either,_ Kit said to her, his thought sounding subdued. _But we never would have met Fred in the first place if it hadn't been for wizardry._

Nita blushed a little at Kit's having overheard her thoughts, but gave him a quiet smile of acknowledgement before entering the living room.

Another man was already sitting on the sofa, poring over the pages of a book the size of a telephone directory. Carl Romeo looked up as the three entered. He, too, must have noticed the odd mixture of emotions betrayed by Nita's and Kit's expressions—an unbelieving joy coupled with bitter loss—and his face clouded over a bit. _Maybe he's remembering his own Ordeal,_ Nita thought, before he spoke.

"Take a seat," Carl said, gesturing to the couch opposite the one he was sitting on. Nita and Kit did so, sinking down into the comfortable cushions as Tom sat next to Carl. Once they were all seated, Carl continued. "My manual—" Carl gestured at the large book he had been reading "—said you two had completed your Ordeal, so we were expecting to see you sometime soon. I'm assuming you two had something to do with the sun going out yesterday."

"Yeah," Kit said, "but that part wasn't us. The Lone One saw to that." And he briefly recounted the more important details of what he and Nita had been through in the past few days. Tom and Carl sat and listened to him in silence, as if they knew that he only had the strength to tell them once. When it became apparent that he was done, there was a moment of silence.

Finally, Tom spoke. "And _The__ Book of Night With Moon_?"

Nita reached into the knapsack that she had set down next to her on the couch and pulled out what at first appeared to be a normal book, bound in black leather. However, no normal book would have the effect on reality that this had. It outshone the rays of sun filtering in through the windows with a fierce brilliance that was soothing to look at. Nita set it on the coffee table, and the four of them just stared at it for a moment.

"Well, it's definitely the real thing," Carl said, taking the Book and holding it reverently in his hands. "We'll see that this gets back to the right people."

"Thanks," Kit said. There was another long pause before Kit said, "So now what?"

It was a question that Nita had been curious about, as well. They were wizards—it felt like she would never get over the thrill that saying that brought to her—but where did they go from here?

"Well," Tom said, "pretty much anything. You won't always be on errantry." His last word received two quizzical looks.

"Errantry?" Nita asked. "Like a knight-errant?"

"Exactly," Tom replied. "It's just another way to say that you're a wizard on duty. I like using it because it sounds much better to say I'm on errantry than it does to say that I'm on active status."

"How do we know when we're on 'active status'?" Nita asked.

"You can check your listings in your manuals," Tom replied, "but usually you'll have an idea as to when you're expected to be doing specific work. Projects will present themselves in such a way that you'll become involved in them. But you won't have to worry about that for a while yet; the Powers that Be usually give new wizards some time to recover from their Ordeals before putting them back on active."

"In the meantime, practice everything," Carl added. "Especially the Speech. It's the wizard's most basic tool; everything else builds off of it."

Nita nodded; it all made sense. Practice makes perfect, the old saying went, and while Nita was certain she would never be perfect, she wanted to be a competent enough wizard that the next time she crossed the Lone Power, she would be prepared. From the look on Kit's face, she could tell he thought the same.

In response to the serious looks on their faces, Tom said, "But above all, _have__ fun_! I know that right now it seems easier said than done, but no one ever promised that being a wizard was going to be easy. And only the powers of Evil claim that doing good is boring."

At this, Nita had to smile slightly, as did Kit. "Thanks for the reminder," he said. The two of them said their goodbyes and walked out into the sunny day.

They walked towards their houses in silence, at first, both deep in thought about all that had happened to them in the past week. They had both changed, Nita realized; Kit looked so much more confident, though sadness still lingered in his eyes. It was hard for her to believe that only a month before he had been teased constantly at school; he looked like the sort of person you wouldn't dare to make fun of. _I've changed, too,_ Nita thought, _though in less visible ways._ Just weeks ago, she would have run away at the sight of Joanne and her cronies, but yesterday, she had done the unthinkable and not only approached Joanne, but acted kindly toward her and even invited her over to her house!

_I could give the Lone One a chance to change,_ Nita had thought then. _Maybe that's all that Joanne needs._ Indeed, Joanne had been unbalanced by Nita's new attitude. Nita had actually left the confrontation without a single scrape.

Looking up, Nita noticed that they were just passing the high school. She looked down at her watch and saw that her parents wouldn't be expecting her back for a few hours, so she stopped and turned to Kit. "Hey," she said, startling him out of his thoughts, "do you have to be home any time soon?"

"Huh?" Kit said, then, "No. Why?"

"Well, I was thinking about what Carl said, about practicing the Speech, and what Tom said about having fun." Nita replied. "Do you want to go and try a new spell?"

"If you're up to it," Kit said.

"Of course," Nita said. "But first, let's go somewhere we can work and not be disturbed."

"Or do any disturbing," Kit added, a bit of his usual humor slipping back into his voice. "How about that place across the freeway, in the interchange? We can set up a binding spell on the edges if we need to."

"Works for me," Nita said, and they changed direction, heading towards the small circle of land formed by one of the freeway off ramps. It was a bit like a bowl, and surrounded by old, tall pine trees, some that might have even been there before the freeway.

They arrived, looking both ways before crossing the freeway, and Kit set up the binding spell quickly and efficiently. Nita watched as he recited the syllables of the wizardly Speech under his breath, listened as the whole clearing grew quiet, the universe waiting for its instructions from the spell. When he finished, the sounds of the world came back, and Kit walked towards Nita.

"I'm assuming you have some spell in mind?" he said.

"There was one I saw a few days back that looked really neat," Nita admitted. "From the description, it seemed almost like it would let you teleport—it's supposed to be used for fast transportation, but fairly local stuff, not like a worldgate."

"Sounds neat," Kit said. "Where are you planning on transporting us _to_?"

"To tell you the truth," Nita said, "I have no idea. It's not like we can just appear out of nowhere in a place with a lot of people; someone would notice."

"So, I _can't_ go see the Coliseum," Kit said. "Gotcha. Somewhere uninhabited?"

"We still have to enter in the coordinates for the place," Nita said, "and I don't know of any place that's guaranteed to be empty; at least, not on this planet." She sighed loudly; she had been hoping to get a chance to try this spell.

Nita looked over at Kit—and saw him grinning. She looked questioningly at him. "Got an idea?"

"_Not_ on this planet!" Kit said, and pointed up. Nita gazed skyward and, through the branches of trees, glimpsed a patch of blue sky, in which the outline of the moon could be faintly seen.

"I mean," Kit continued, "it would be a little more complicated. We'd have to bring air to breathe—and do something about the cold—" He opened his manual and began paging through it furiously. Nita did the same, though not before a second glance at the moon.

Half an hour later, they were finally finished with the spell diagram. Kit stood up, brushing dirt and twigs off of himself, and stepped back to survey the product of their work. Nita got up as well. The idea that she and Kit could accomplish what they were about to attempt filled her with a tingling excitement. Constructing the spell hadn't been easy, and had required using much more math than Nita liked, but now it was done, and they just had to read it for it to take effect.

Kit and Nita took their places on opposite sides of the circle drawn in the dirt, but not before checking their names one last time, just in case. Nita was a little apprehensive, but looking across the circle at Kit, she felt reassured. Though she had barely known him for any time at all, she trusted him; there was no way they could have both lived through their Ordeal without trusting each other.

Kit looked at Nita and slowly began to read from his manual. Nita joined in, her voice twining together with his, and slowly a silence began to settle around the clearing, intensifying with every word of the Speech that they spoke. By the time Nita made it to the verbal expression of the wizard's knot that would complete the spell, it was so silent that her voice would have sounded too loud even if it had been barely above a whisper. When together she and Kit spoke the last word, it was as though the world twisted around them. Nita couldn't see, couldn't feel, couldn't hear—

And then the spell released them, and sensory details flooded back in a rush. Nita could feel the powdery surface of the ground she was kneeling on, could hear her and Kit's rapid breathing in the otherwise silent air.

Worn out from the spell, it took Nita a moment to catch her breath, but eventually her breathing calmed, as did Kit's beside her. Finally she had a chance to examine the place they had ended up.

The ground she was sitting on was hard, and covered in a fine, whitish-grey powder that clung to Nita's clothes. The horizon seemed peculiarly closer than usual, and though the sun was visible to the left and Nita's shadow lay at her feet, the sky was black, interrupted only by the pinpricks of light that Nita recognized immediately as stars.

Next to her, Kit was staring off to the right with a look of absolute awe on his face. Nita saw immediately what he was staring at, and couldn't blame him in the least.

In front of them was the beautiful profile of Earth. All of the pictures Nita had seen could not even begin to capture the wonder that it was to be standing on the moon, looking down at home. _It's so small!_ Nita thought, though it looked much larger than the moon seen from Earth.

"It may be small," Kit said aloud, "but it holds so much."

Anywhere else, Nita would have either blushed at thinking so loudly or socked Kit for listening in on her brain, but here and now, all she could do was stare. Her joy was so great that it was almost painful.

Nita wasn't sure how long they just stood there, watching their world wind its way through space. She could have stayed up there forever. _This_ was why she was a wizard.

Kit was obviously thinking along the same lines. "We've gone through a lot," he said wistfully, "and it's only going to get harder…but I think this is worth it."

"Yeah," Nita agreed. "There's so much that goes wrong down there," she gestured at Earth, "but from here, you can't really see it."

"Maybe, someday, we won't see it down there, either," Kit said.

"Maybe," Nita agreed.

Eventually, they pulled their gazes away from Earth's beauty and half-heartedly recited the spell that would take them back home. Neither of them was in a mood to speak, so they parted company and went their separate ways, agreeing to talk more the next day at school. Nita got home and was immediately enlisted by her mother to help with chores, after which the family ate dinner and Nita finished up a bit of homework she had left until the last minute.

She did not really have a chance to think about her and Kit's visit in depth until late at night, when she was lying in her bed with the lights out. What she had seen went beyond amazing; she was not sure that English had any words to describe it with. The things she had seen and experienced on her Ordeal had caused her much sorrow. She had truly realized, for perhaps the first time, how terrible the world could truly be.

But seeing it looking so peaceful, so completely serene and calm had reminded her of why she had decided to become a wizard in the first place—and why she knew that she would stay one until her death. Yes, the world could be a horrible place, but as a wizard, she had a chance to stop some of the horror. She knew she would not have an easy life, but her actions would make the lives of others more bearable. It was worth it.

The last image she saw before she fell asleep was of the blue and green Earth, blanketed by clouds, looking like a gem on the black velvet of the sky.

A/N: I just thought I'd let you know that what Tom says about only the powers of Evil saying that doing good is boring is pretty much a direct quote from the Afterword to the 20th Anniversary Edition of So You Want to be a Wizard. Diane Duane said it, not me.  
  
The title of this was inspired by something that Spot says in chapter 2 of Wizards at War, but has nothing to do with the plot of Wizards at War. I just thought it made a really cool title. Please review!


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